Subtext
by fleurs-du-mol
Summary: Takes place during "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." Smut with feelings. Feelings with smut. A little bit of magical realism thrown in at the beginning. Ianto discovers Jack's office fetish and Jack tries to make creative amends for disappearing. Not as explicit as I'd planned, but this is my first attempt in a long while at writing dirty. (Pun intended.)


**A/N:** Moderate smut with feelings, taking place during "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang." A little more happens in that office building before Spike, I mean, John gets there… because I say so. This has not been edited yet! (I know, I know, I should be a grownup and edit things before I post them, but this is the first smut I've written in a while.) I hope you all enjoy.

* * *

The cards feel heavy in his hands. "Shuffle the deck," the little girl says.

It's a lark, something to pass the time. Ianto is a few drinks past sober. He wouldn't call himself a heavy drinker, but ever since Jack disappeared from the Hub, he finds more excuses to drink. He never does at work, although he notices Gwen has taken to always having a beer with lunch, something she rarely did when Jack was around.

The girl's eyes are large and hazel, too old for her very young face; she sits across from him like a queen, the table an expanse of rough wood between them. He feels utterly ridiculous.

"Will you be able to tell me where he's gone?"

He shuffles the cards with their strange symbols and plain crimson backs. The first time Ianto saw a Tarot deck he was probably nine. Rhiannon got one from a secondhand store and tried to teach herself how to read it—his older sister who is more earthbound than anyone he's ever met. She'd had a friend who was into the occult, and living in Cardiff with its weird happenings, that was less of a stretch than it should be, only everyone got it all wrong. It was never really mystic gods or cosmic chi— it was aliens and driftwood from the Rift. Even ghosts were generally a result of time gone spongy.

The little girl laughs, a sound of pity rather than disdain. "The question is more, will it make you feel any better when I do?" Ianto hands her back the deck, breathing in tendrils of incense smoke that make him feel lightheaded and almost sedated.

She lays out three cards. Something in the dark room stirs.

"The Three of Swords." Ianto looks: there's a red heart being pierced by three sharp swords. The little girl meets his eyes. "This one's yours."

"I don't know what it means," says Ianto, shaking his head.

"I can tell you where the Captain's gone without consulting the cards; they're telling me something different. It's something about you. I mean the reading is yours."

"And I don't care about that," he says, a little harshly. "Tell me where he is." Her small, pale hands still for the moment, hovering over her cards, and she smiles.

"His Doctor finally came back."

Ianto goes pale, slumps in his chair. "Then he—"

_It means he's not coming back,_ _not for a while, at least, _says a small, traitorous voice in his head. _You'll be old by the time he sees you again. _Jack talks about the Doctor in a tone bordering on reverence. Ianto doesn't mind his flirting with anyone and everyone; it is part of Jack's nature. If he tried to change it, Jack wouldn't be Jack. There's so much more to him than that: he's genuinely caring under the swagger, intensely paradoxical because he can't die.

The flirting didn't mean he was in love or anything: it was just flirting. Jack flirts with him all the time, after all.

But the Doctor is different.

One night, when they are in the Hub late and Ianto is filing while Jack catalogues some artifacts they remanded from Cardiff University, Ianto finally gets Jack to tell him as much as he would about the Doctor. Clearly Jack feels a kinship with the man: they are two people stranded outside their times, away from home, two adventurers who fix more problems than they let on, and then cause new ones in the process. Ianto can't help but be a little resentful of this mysterious, lone figure.

Compared to the Doctor, he really does feel like just the tea-cum-coffee boy. No pun intended.

And there's Jack, his good, lovely, dashing trickster of a boss—who leaves on a moment's notice, who for a few weeks has them all thinking he's permanently gone until they assure themselves that he essentially_ is_ Torchwood.

Ianto does not believe Jack will come back merely for love of them—or him—but he will come back when the world decides to really end, or the Rift cracks and stays open, or something equally big. _He won't come back just for us,_ thinks Ianto, _or for me._ The thought is strangely restful: his entire life, Ianto has been used to being overlooked. It's a talent of his. Even at Torchwood One it was more of an asset than a curse.

"He will return for you, Ianto Jones."

There's finality in her words. She's looking at the last two cards. Jack of Swords, Ace of Cups. She pulls one more. The Hanged Man. Another: The Lovers. Ianto, at least, doesn't have to ask about that one, or the final one that follows, which is Death. The thing in the darkness stirs again. Ianto closes his eyes. He doesn't know what she's doing to him, but somehow, she's inside his head. Not spying, precisely, but this must be how she knows things, including his full name. It isn't just the cards.

It's some leeching of space and time.

Suddenly, Ianto also knows she is the first victim of the Resurrection Gauntlet. This is the girl who battled Death. He supposed she was some kind of alien, maybe a time traveller. But no, she was human and mortal once. She has told him in some primal, wordless language to gain his confidence, or possibly, his respect. He sees everything, snatches of her past.

Ianto knows already that she knows Jack, who recorded a few of their meetings in the archives. It was why he sought out her readings, even though he had to be halfway pissed to do it.

So he asks, "Why?"

"The Captain can love," she says. There's a flicker in her gaze, a reflection of starlight and fire in the dim lamps. "It's rare enough, but don't doubt him."

* * *

When Ianto sees Jack for the first time in weeks, he can't decide if he wants to punch him in the face or kiss him.

They are alone on one of the upper floors of the office building where John materialized out of the Rift. Ianto can't concentrate, and he's looking anywhere but at Jack. Unfortunately, Jack notices. He asks Ianto how he's doing. Ianto wants to chuck the bin sitting next to his feet at Jack's head in response. It's metal, but it wouldn't hurt Jack—much—and definitely not for very long.

And, an office fetish: that would explain why Jack would have any attraction to him. He just about embodies office professionalism on a regular basis, with his three-piece suits and under-the-radar sarcasm. This revelation almost makes Ianto skip, but instead he scoffs.

"Seriously," says Jack. "Have I grown grossly disfigured and not realized it? You're having trouble even looking at me, and that's a feat." He grins lasciviously. Ianto clears his throat and meets Jack's eyes for longer than two seconds. "Ianto." The tone of his voice changes a little, gets softer and just a shade more serious.

"Sir."

Jack rolls his eyes. "I'll deal with Captain, but can we dispense with the 'Sir?' It makes me feel old."

"You are old," says Ianto, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he adds, "_sir_." He automatically straightens up a stack of files on someone's desk and when he looks up, Jack has crossed the space between them. The man's solid, but he can move quietly as a cat.

"I may be old, but I ain't dead yet."

"That's not funny, s—"

Ianto can't finish his sentence because Jack's kissing him, a scorching, promising kiss that happens so roughly he can feel his lip start to bleed. The tidied files fall to the floor in a flutter as Jack pins him to the desk, which thankfully is heavy enough to bear both of them.

Jack pauses, draws a scant centimeter away, and says, "I just asked you out on a date and you look like a deer caught in headlights. I figured this was a more expressive way of driving the point home."

"So instead of taking me to dinner, we're going to fuck on a stranger's desk in one of the most mundane offices in Cardiff? _That's _what gets you off these days? Well, I suppose when you are so old—" Ianto cuts himself off with a muttered, "Oh-my-god," as Jack bites the tender flesh where his neck meets his left shoulder.

He registers, briefly, that they're both fully clothed, so if there is a mark there—which he's sure there will be—it's going to be completely visible no matter what he does, even though Jack has loosened his tie to shove down the edge of his collar for better access to his neck. Oh, he's a master, all right. Ianto didn't even notice the first two buttons being undone, or the tie being less tight.

"No," murmurs Jack, and Ianto feels warm breath on his earlobe, "we are not going to fuck _here_. Bonus points for using the word 'fuck,' by the way. I don't think I've heard you say it before. It sounded delicious."

"We aren't?" The muted question comes out as a plea, and Jack chuckles.

"No."

"Then what?" Ianto works to keep his voice more level, simply out of stubbornness. Other parts of his body have responded more definitively than his brain, which is still feeling betrayed, would like. The only thing that makes him feel better is the fact that Jack's cock is just as hard as his: he can feel it against his leg.

Smirking, Jack runs his fingers in circles on his inner thigh, but nowhere near close enough to provide any sort of relief, and especially not through wool trousers. Ianto writhes against him. Jack keeps his other hand solidly on Ianto's waist, keeping their torsos plastered together and Ianto trapped between one very determined Captain and a maltreated piece of office furniture. Luckily, the chair that belongs to the desk has rolled a short distance away, otherwise Ianto bets Jack would have found a use for it, too.

"Ianto."

"Please."

"I want you, as the saying goes, hot and bothered."

"Do you, Sir?"

"Uh-huh. Straining against me, maybe saying my name breathlessly or moaning more obscenities, in Welsh or English, your choice—and all the while, trying to keep calling me 'Sir' as you wonder what my mouth would feel like around your cock. For all of that, I need you in a place where we can _take our time_. That wouldn't be here." A little whimper escapes from Ianto's throat before he can decide it will only goad Jack along. "_Then _I want to hear you come, and trust me, you _will_ be making noise."

"The things you learn about your boss's workplace fantasies." Ianto is resolute to be droll, not to give Jack any verbal satisfaction. "Shit."

But then comes the thing that fully collapses Ianto's resolve: Jack's mouth so, so close to his, close enough to kiss if he wasn't being restrained by someone who has a fair amount of muscle on him, as well as an incredible amount of acumen in foreplay.

"You asked. Though they won't be fantasies much longer, once I get you back to the Hub."

Ianto arches into him, trying to close the minute gap between their lips, which garners Jack's first involuntary sound… a short intake of breath. For a moment both men say nothing, blue eyes locked onto blue eyes.

"Jack," sighs Ianto. "I've _been_ hot and bothered for months. You were gone. You left _me." _

The proximity, the sound of their breathing, and the heat of Jack's body against him—they've all come together to make him painfully honest. In fact, as he strains to do something, anything, to get Jack's hands and mouth wandering again, he starts to get more than physically frustrated—anger, the first sign of it, appears.

"Oh, so no more 'Sir' when we're serious," says Jack softly. Still pinning Ianto with his hips, he slowly unbuttons Ianto's waistcoat. Breathlessly, Ianto watches him as he moves on to his shirt. At this point, he doesn't much care about the clothing; Jack should be ripping things off of him. This slow seduction, seemingly, is his method of apology. "I came back."

"For Torchwood. Don't think you can win me over with the best sex I've ever had; I just found out you had a wife who was a man, and I don't care if it was only in a time loop. You've left me alone for—"

Jack finally leans toward him again and silences him in the most efficient way possible: an erotic and desperate meshing of tongue, lips, gentler with the teeth this time since Ianto's already a little bloodied. Hands, too, are back, stroking down his sides and then lower. A thumb slides between his belt and skin, just under his navel.

"For _you_, Ianto. You're right, I came back for Torchwood, but you're part of that for me in a way the others just aren't. A 'sorry' won't cut it, but I can make amends more creatively." Unhooking Ianto's belt and deftly dealing with a mere button, Jack says, "If you're okay with that."

Ianto remembers the little girl: _Don't doubt him._

And he, at last, decides not to doubt his Captain. It feels beautiful.

"God yes," he says. But he stops Jack from his excursions, twisting so that they both fall into the empty chair, with Jack being forced to sit back, allowing Ianto to straddle him, or trip. He laughs as Ianto twines his fingers into his short, dark hair. Ianto kisses Jack instead of Jack kissing him. "I was wondering if I could do that effectively—you always seem so keen on dictating the terms of our encounters. And they aren't fair, your muscles."

"You've been planning it the whole time," accuses Jack, circling Ianto's waist with one arm, stroking his cheek with his free hand. Ianto feels the leather of Jack's wristband trailing his jaw, smells the mix of Jack and sweat. "My innovative Ianto." The chair stops rolling as it hits the legs of another cubicle.

Ianto flushes slightly at his use of the possessive. "Not the whole time, no, but I did notice exactly where the chair had gone. And I had the element of surprise. You were otherwise occupied." He kisses Jack's exposed neck and nips at his skin, earning an appreciative sigh. The arm around his waist tenses, as do the fingers on his cheek, and he's afraid there will be resulting gouges from Jack's nails. Jack writhes into him, though it's almost impossible for them to be closer together.

"I wasn't lying when I said I wanted you begging me to fuck you."

"You never said that," Ianto says. He bites harder, sucking, wanting to leave a mark and not caring about any questions from the others. If Jack did the same to him, then he'd give it back in spades. At least people expected Jack to have love bites.

"Didn't I?" says Jack, and Ianto is pleased to hear the tremor in his normally wry, confident voice. "Well, that must have been the subtext."

Ianto laughs against his neck. "Sir, you don't _do_ subtext."


End file.
